The invention relates to a harvesting device for harvesting and/or picking up crop and/or plants or plant parts located on the field.
“Pick-up” devices for picking up crop such as hay, straw, silage, “energy plants”, etc., have been used for decades in agriculture. Self-loading forage wagons, balers, and forage harvesters are equipped with appropriate pick-up front attachments.
These pick-ups comprise a pick-up roller, which has numerous tines disposed transversely to the direction of travel. The tines rotate along controlled curved trajectories during operation. The tines grab the crop, which usually has been mowed, and convey the crop upwardly in the vertical direction. The crop that is picked up in this manner is directed to a conveyor device, which further conveys the crop. In the case of a self-loading forage wagon, for example, the crop is often cut or shortened with the aid of a header.
In a pick-up front attachment for a forage harvester, the crop that is picked up is conveyed transversely by the conveyor device, usually toward the middle, to an intake chute. The crop, which has thereby been gathered in the center, is cut up via a cutting and chopping assembly and is usually fed via a lower discharge chute to a separate agricultural hauling vehicle.
In the case of a forage harvester in particular, given that the agricultural working devices continue to increase in size, a large quantity of crop is often combined to form a common swath. Therefore, such forage harvesters must pick up and process normal swaths and, at times, very large swaths during operation. It has been shown that fluctuating quantities of crop to be picked up can cause the further conveyance and chopper load to be inconsistent.
Specifically in the case of particularly large quantities of crop to be picked up, it has been shown that the forage harvester or the self-loading forage wagon, etc., can only reach a relatively slow ground speed. However, because the crop is picked up from the field/ground by means of the conveyor tines substantially vertically upwards and the conveyor tines therefore initially move opposite the direction of travel, the intake and grabbing of the crop is partially supported and conveyed further via the direction of travel and the ground speed. Therefore, the pick-up or intake of the crop also is dependent on the ground speed to a certain extent, and at times (e.g., low ground speeds), is not optimal.